By Any Other Name
by Shiro Ryuu
Summary: The man now known merely as Erik Lensherr contemplates the irony of some names he knows, and the irony of things in general. Focuses on his relationships with Charles and Mystique. Post X3.


**Disclaimer: **I own nothing, nothing at all, trust me.

**AN: **So. My first X-Men fic - and it wound up being this rambling, uneventful, inconclusive introspective centering around some of the most unloved characters in the show. Surprise, surprise (this could probably refer equally well to most of my stories). What's worse, it's pretty much the same thing that everybody's been writing for these two since the third movie... Nevertheless, if you can actually bear to read it the whole way through, I really hope you review. Those of you who have never posted may not know this, but we authors really do genuinely care about our reviews. Simply put, it's really disheartening to look at my hit counter and see that three people out of three hundred have actually bothered to review, it can put me off writing for days. (bow, bow) Review, please!

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**By Any Other Name**

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Erik Lensherr had never been a creature of habit. He was, however, a very adaptable person, and at first glance it appeared that he was finally settling into a routine. Every morning he would wake up early, have breakfast over the paper, spend a few hours in the park, and then go home and pass the rest of the day reading. From an outsider's point of view, it seemed like a pleasant enough retirement. But the truth was that it was more a matter of 'force' than 'of habit' - and he had never been one for being forced into anything, either.

Though it was not cold this time of year, he wore a heavy coat and pulled a hat concealingly low over his face. He hunched his shoulders as he walked back from the park, as if guarding against some cold wind - something cold had been creeping up on him these past few weeks, at any rate. Today might seem no different from yesterday, unless the observer happened to notice the small, chimerical smile just visible below the shadow of the brim of his hat.

Normally he preferred to take his lunch inside, lights turned off. He found the cool and quiet shadows something of a relief after the noise and light of the park that he at least vaguely noticed as he played his lonely games of chess. Today, however, he took his meal out on to his small - as yet unused - balcony, and meditated on the two growing halves of the San Francisco Bridge. This change was to him a tiny but subtly rebellious gesture, of what he wasn't sure.

Two seconds of time replayed themselves over and over for the scrutiny of his mind's eye. Had there been a sudden gust of wind at that moment? he wondered. Had his finger trembled slightly, touched it? These were all pointless questions, really. At that moment, he had felt it, beyond a shadow of a doubt - all the other metal around him, molecules humming, pulsing, wonderfully malleable as always. But it had only lasted for an instant; his world was dark again. Oh, he could see it all, and touch it with his hands; to him, it was like a blind man numbly groping.

Just how long had he been blind, now...?

He drank wine with his lunch, though it was really much too early, to sooth his mind. He shouldn't get too excited over this. He should be practical...

Perhaps this was just an aftershock - a dying gasp of his mutation - and there might be a few more moments like this and then that would be it. Perhaps his powers would come back in time, but never as strong again, permanently crippled. But even if he did somehow fully recover...

He took another sip of wine, swirled the liquid in its glass, watched it turn, watched his hand turn it. The thing was, he'd had a surprising realization since he'd lost his powers, since he'd had so much time to think lately. He was an _old man_. He hadn't cared before now, had always been Magneto first and foremost, or maybe he'd just been too busy to notice... Lately, however, he was becoming more and more aware that he remembered things that the vast majority of the populous had only heard about in history class. The point was, even if he regained his powers, how much longer would he really be able to enjoy them? No more than twenty years, surely. Even if he regained his powers and won his war, he would only be able to savor the fruits of his labors for a decade or two at most. It wasn't as if he had any heirs or protégées that he cared about providing for. It made the whole endeavor seem so... tiring...

He fiddled with the stem of the wineglass where it sat on the table. The glass had a decorative ring of silver around the rim - because Erik owned very few things without some metallic component - but it was cold to him. Nevertheless, he contemplated it thoughtfully. _Protégée..._

He tried to shrug that thought off, shrug the whole thing off. Why give up now, at the end of the game? Only someone who was certain of impending defeat would do that. And at this age, one of his biggest advantages was that, even if he did fail, he really had nothing to lose.

The insidious voice in the back of his head persisted. _But what do you have to win?_

A light summer wind blew over him, warming his bones, but Erik took little comfort in it. He drummed his fingers absentmindedly on the wire mesh tabletop. Ripples played across the surface of the forgotten wine as the breeze coiled down into the glass.

_What do I have to win? If this war was over, and I could live as a mutant in peace, what would I do? Wouldn't I want to do... well... this? What a... wretched fate..._

Charles was gone. He hesitated to say 'dead'; it just seemed so absurd. They had been sworn enemies for some time now, certainly - his sabotage of Cerebro sprang to mind - but... after all, Charles was the only one who had ever been able to beat him at chess... To put it another way, he was one of the few people who had earned the honor of calling him 'Erik'.

He stared into the breeze, felt it in his hair. Perhaps if Charles were still here - or the other one who had earned that honor - then all this effort might seem more worthwhile?

_The other one. _A flash of blue skin, shining gold eyes, gloriously inhuman... But that was exactly it, wasn't it? Though she had called him 'Erik', she had always been 'Mystique' to him, and he liked to think that this should have given her some hint of her fate... But really, the truth was that she simply would not have answered to any other name. She had always been so ostracized by the _Homo sapiens_ for her powers that she could not have possibly continued to consider herself as of any relation to this Raven, and she would have been offended if he had dared suggest otherwise.

And now look at her.

An odd feeling welled up inside of him as the breeze brew a strong gust of salt smell over his balcony, and he finally realized that it had been building for some time now. His fingers beat out a simple pulse on the table, and he hummed under his breath. _Oh..._

The irony of the whole situation was truly something to be savored, Erik considered. He had hated humans at least as much as Mystique, surely, but he had always taken a bitter kind of pride in his human past. His mother's screams in his memories - the brand on his wrist - these were the cross he willingly carried, as a justification for his hatred. Raven had reacted to the hate in a different way, by denying her past and becoming Mystique - a soldier whose first kill had been a certain black-haired, green-eyed girl... And yet, now that they were both human again, Erik was the one who was totally miserable, utterly useless, whereas she was already integrating herself into society.

It was only natural, Erik supposed. She was young and beautiful, if not in the way that she had been to him. He had been keeping an eye on her; in return for her furious betrayal of him and an oath of loyalty, she had received a presidential pardon for her crimes as a mutant. He supposed he should leave her alone. Assuming that she had been satisfied with her revenge, he would probably never see her again.

_But on the other hand..._

He considered the chess piece from today, and watched his table with interest. But on the other hand, if one were to assume for the sake of argument that even four times the prescribed dose of that so-called cure really _wasn't_ enough to overpower him, then perhaps she would revert to her old self as well, given time. Maybe there was some 'hope' for the future, after all.

Erik stood abruptly, went inside. He would spend the afternoon reading, he decided... but tomorrow, well, tomorrow was a new day. The wire table settled gently back onto the ground, and the silver vines that covered the wineglass drew up into a simple circle around the rim once more.

**-End-**


End file.
